Taddy- licious ...

Way way back, when the garden was brown and not green, and the only colour around was my red nose, I wrote a post about finding frogspawn in our wildlife pond   ('Look what we've got ...' ). Turns out the hapless frogs had done the dirty deed much too soon, as the majority of the frogspawn died in the ensuing 'Big Freeze'. Most of it had begun to degenerate  (  'De-frogification ...' ), but I managed to find a clump which still looked reasonably good, and put it in the greenhouse, to protect it from the worst of the weather. Not in a special tank, you understand, but in a plastic take away carton !

If I am honest I did sort of forget about it for a few days, and when I went back to check, I was delighted to find that the eggs had hatched, and turned from little black full stops to little black commas !  See the post 'Re-frogification ...' to get the full unexpurgated version !

The tadpoles were re-introduced gently to the pond,  ('Re-frogification revisited ...' ) and left to their own devices. The weather had warmed up and slowly, slowly, Spring began to spring.

This is what I saw today, the little tadpoles love the warmer shallow water, and positively 'swarm' on the gently sloping sides of the pond.

They have developd from the little commas they were, and their bodies and tails can be easily discerned.

Apologies for quality of this photo, but I wanted to show you the mass of black bodies !

So, crisis over for this seasons new generation of frogs, who can now grow up happily in the pond, taking the usual life chances along the way.

I am now on the look out for newt eggs and newtlets, as I have spotted adult newts  in the pond several times. I will keep you posted ...